Blue Shield Leaks 18,000 Doctors' Social Security Numbers

itwbennett (1594911) writes "The Social Security numbers of roughly 18,000 California physicians and health-care providers were inadvertently made public after a slip-up at health insurance provider Blue Shield of California, the organization said Monday. The numbers were included in monthly filings on medical providers that Blue Shield is required to make to the state's Department of Managed Health Care (DMHC). The provider rosters for February, March and April 2013 included the SSNs and other sensitive information and were available under the state's public records law." Ten copies were requested under the public records law.

Comments

Re:Good news though

[Anonymous Coward]

Using SSN as an identifier isn't really the problem.

It's that they want it to be BOTH the public identifier AND the private password.

If it is just an identifier, you should be able to use it publicly - but the whole idea is that you need to guard it and keep it secret because they are treating your knowledge of it as proof that you actually belong to the account is where the problem arises. Either it is just a record number, in which case it shouldn't be a secret - or it is your password, in which case you should have a public record number that isn't secret.